The Best First Half of The Year In Gaming?

With games like Burnout Paradise, Grand Theft Auto 4, Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Mario Kart Wii & Boom Blox already out and with GRID & Metal Gear Solid 4 coming out within the next month, 2008 is shaping to be a great year for games or at least the first half of it is. Last year we where treated to games like Warioware, Crackdown & GRAW 2 but to be fair they where never near the quality of games we’ve seen this year. We take a look to see what first half of the year had the best games and what they where.

Now obviously the first half of this year hasn’t actually finished yet, we’ve still got another month that is full of great games so, take that in note while looking at the following data. All information has been pulled from Metacritic that takes into account different region & version releases. So that’s why games like Resident Evil 4 are featured on the lists. We have also only taken scores from games that actually got scores. So some years x amount of games will be taken into account when actually x +50 where released. The reason for this is that you can’t put a number on a game that doesn’t qualify for an average on Metacritic. We’ve taken scores from games released from 1/1/xxxx to 30/6/xxxx.

Highest Score Vs Lowest Score

This chart shows the highest score vs the lowest score for the first half of each year. We can see that 2008 has the best game but it appears that 1998 and 1999 had the edge in producing quality games in the first half.

Highest Score Vs Lowest Score Vs Median Averages

This is the same chart as above but with the Median Averages. Again the early years in 1999 and 1998 had the edge and you can see a steady slope of average games getting worse.

Amount Of Games Released In First Half of the Year Vs Median Average

Now so far we can tell that 1999 & 1998 had the best average number of games but you can also tell why. Only 15 then 16 games where released in those two years. Compare that to the 470 last year and you can see how big the game industry as gotten. It’s also a sign of publishers knowing that games don’t have to always come out at Christmas. Which is always a good thing.

For your information here is what those best and worst games actually were.

So despite the fact that a few top titles are yet to be released, 2008 has already gotten the best game ever and is so far beating the average from the last year. We will revisit these charts when all the reviews are in for games released from 1/1/2008 to 30/6/2008. Overall what these charts show is that people do play games other than at Christmas time and now the publishers are starting to get on board with that.